Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday May 30, 2004 @05:01AM
from the elevating-the-subjunctive dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A game for children modified for geeks: The austrian art (or something like that) group monochrom has made the worlds probably first massive multiplayer thumbwrestling performance in the viennese Museumsquartier. They've got some photos and explanation of several network structures (even includes a Death Star Reactor - i wonder how many things like that could be done - new kind of simple origami?). A network game in the 50s? Beware: requires real social interaction!"

The game "war," as I have seen it, is completely random -- you simply apply an algorithm to a given shuffling to a deck, so the game is decided before it is begun. The game is effectively equivalent to a coin toss.

By the way, I'm a rather good thumbwrestler (if I do say so myself), and I do enjoy playing the game. It's great for roadtrips or anything else that involves a lot of waiting.

In war, the point is that some times you come up with the same card as your opponent. You each then put three cards face down before you. Then you choose one of these cards as the one to battle the others new card with.

Of course it changes the possible outcome - if you choose a 'lucky' card, you'll end up with more cards than if you'd chosen an 'unlucky' card, thus altering the content of both you and your opponent's stacks, and ultimately the following plays until victory or defeat.

Being completely random doesn't make it inconsequential. Your choice of card does affect the game, even though you have no chance to foresee which card it will be. It's not completely unlike rolling a die.

There is no difference, theoretically.But when the card has been shuffled and are in a set order, a card from the middle of the pile is unlikely to be the same as the top card. Unless it has the same value as the top card, it is either higher or lower. This is the point of the entire discussion; this is the only time apart from deck shuffling that randomness is a factor of the game. Just because it's not predictable doesn't make it inconsequential.I'm not sure you read my post on how it's supposed to go whe

Looking at those pictures, being ambidextrous would be a huge advantage. The average person would be predominantly right or left handed and would probably end up being caught "out" much quicker than somebody who could use both hands with equal ease.

But then, the average person wouldn't be playing massive multiplayer thumbwrestling.
And true ambidexterity is rare.

Well, this is something I wonder about and hope that a more qualified person on slashdot could provide an answer to. Is there any such thing as a naturally ambidextrous [wikipedia.org] or left [wikipedia.org]/right [wikipedia.org] handed person? I'm asking because so many of the things people do with their hand are practiced skills. For example I'm right handed and thus have always shaved with my right hand. But if I were to try and shave using my left hand would my left-handed shaving be any better than the first time I tried to shave with my right hand?

I'm just curious because I have an Aunt who says she's ambidextrous, but I think it's because when she learns something new, she makes an effort to learn it with both hands. IE, when she learned to play tennis, she switched hands every few hits. Also, for my [shameless plug] London Journal [colingregorypalmer.net][/shameless plug] I usually write the entries out long hand first. But after a few pages my right hand gets tired. Because I didn't want to stop, I decided to learn to write with my left hand as well so I could alternate hands on each page.

I just wonder if handedness is the result of the fact than it takes less energy and effort to make one one hand a specialist that is required to make two.

I just wonder if handedness is the result of the fact than it takes less energy and effort to make one one hand a specialist that is required to make two.

Handedness is that sketchy area which involves a number of things such as brain laterality, environmental, sociocultural and genetic factors.

There is a research team [indiana.edu] that does indepth studies in such areas and obviously there are different theories which exist.

Hereditary factors state that a child is more likely to be born left handed if one parent is left handed, and the chances increase if both parents are left handed.

Socially and culturally, you have reasons like religious beliefs that left handedness is wrong or the left hand is associated with "cleaning yourself". In the old days, kids were beaten for using the left hand.

And then there's other medical reasons like kids who are born with higher levels of testosterone as a result of increased stress during birth are more likely to be born left handed.

True ambidexterity is rare because the brain is wired to predominately favour one hand over the other.

I would say that I do most things with my right hand because thats the hand I use more frequently. Don't really know why I always start doing things right-handed, though. I know there are a few things, like swinging a baseball bat, that I started so clueless that I wound up doing them left-handed and not knowing it. So, handedness might be a cultural thing... the more you observe something, the more you're likely to adopt the handedness that you observe.

Right-brained people are left-handed; left-brained people are right-handed. This is not always true, but it generally is.

Each hemisphere has its own duties, and usually the more structured part is the left hemisphere, and that's the one we want for motor tasks because it involves simple instructions in a proper order. Some people are "backwards" and their right hemisphere wants to handle writing and similar tasks.

Still there are others whose division of duties is scrambled -- not necessarily a bad thing,

In today's news a massive human pyramid of thumbwrestlers died from DoS attack from an unknown assailant. The assailant is believed to have used a brute force method known as "pushing". When the network was "pushed" each memeber of the group succumbed to the "pushing" and the attack spread throughout the whole network killing the entire netowrk at an exponential rate.

If you want to assure that you will win every thumbwrestling match, stick your hand in your pants and poke your thumb up your ass in full view of your oponents. You will win their immediate submission or forfieture, ensuring your advancement to the next round of competition.

Also, another tactic is to piss on your hand prior to competition, in view of your opponents. This will service the purpose of shaking their confidence and coat your thumb with a slickening layer of urine enabling you to escape from otherwise finishing blows.

how was that a Troll comment? the top pic is of a bunch of people thumb wrestling with their arms making the shape of a swastika. it may not have been funny, but I sure as hell don't think it was a troll either

This happened in Europe. They know they won't get the plague by touching the skin of another, seemingly healthy, human being(even if that same human being has picked his nose earlier, or worse, touched a door handle!).
Massive hygiene hysteria in the US makes many people believe the contrary.
Gosh I guess some of them even ATE without washing their hands after this!! I wonder of many of them are still alive...
While I was an exchange student in the US (coming from Belgium) I was staying with a wonderful american family in Colorado and have kept strong contacts with them ever since. Before departing, I decided to prepare them meat balls with a home recipe. Once we sat at the table, nobody would eat, and I was wondering how they could not like it without tasting it. So I asked them and they were embarassed because they did not dare to eat because I had prepared the meat balls WITH MY BARE HANDS after washing them. The housewife usually put plastic gloves when manipulating food... So I had to convince them that my hands were disease free and that I had washed them thoroughly and that the meatballs had cooked for 40 minutes in the oven, which would kill anything left. They finally tried the meal (half cold, but we put it in the microwave-- what a sacrilege!) and founjd it fabulous (in earnest, because they asked me to do it once again before leaving)

It is already prooven that exaggerated hygiene is at least fostering allergies, since your immune systems sits there and is idle, it can't train, and figurueally at one time it so bored it starts to react at just something - normally totally harmless to the human body like housedust, cat-hair, strawberries, milk, pollen, and so on.

I.e. chidring growing up on a farm have less than half the risk of becoming an allrgic, like ones living in a city.

they did not dare to eat because I had prepared the meat balls WITH MY BARE HANDS after washing them.

When I was reading through this, I was waiting for (what I had anticipated to be) the inevitable, "made them with my bare hands after having done gross things with them all day." I thought you were going to say stuff like, "Europeans always eat food that was cooked with dirty hands and no one has ever gotten sick from it." I was mentally preparing my response that the American family was fully justified

Well she didn't put gloves for most things like handling vegetables and such, but she explained that for some things it was necessary: handling raw meat apparently was one of them, mixing flour and water to make bread or other things where the hands would get "covered" with a lot of food.
I guess she still allowed herself to take a carrot with her naked hand when cutting it.

Dude, this is a *first*. I mean, usually we Ugly Americans are getting dissed by the (rest of the) civilized world for doing all the gross stuff: reusing handkerchiefs apparently freaks out japanese people, we eat virtually everything with our hands, and we even coined the 'five second rule' for dealing with food that falls on the floor.

My grandma is REALLY old-school. Living with her for a summer, I noticed a lot of spooky habits. The worst was that she was storing Mayonaise in the cupboard, unrefrige

Milk, leftovers, vegetables, bread. Ten bucks a month for all of these, including the amortized cost of the machine. I use the freezer for ice, bulk-purchases of meat, more leftovers, pre-packaged meals, kid-friendly snacks (pizzas, chicken nuggets, etc), my annual wild-game (ahem) harvests so they can be stretched out over a year (hunting season comes but once a year!). And did I mention milk? As far as I'm concerned, the 4 essential food groups are milk, potatoes, oreos, and more milk. At anything cl

The mere thought of invading ones personal bubble, let alone touching another persons hands is unacceptable. Dear God, think of the germs! It's no coinsidence they named one of the games the "death star"!

<Sadistical mocking voice>
You know, that keyboard your touching is full of germs too. And that piece of soap you used this morning is covered with them as well.
You see those walls around you? They're full of them too. Those windows? Covered as well. Your door? Billions of germs covering evert square cm. Even the floor you're resting your feet on...
They are everywhere. You can't escape them. The germs have you...
</Sadistical mocking voice>

There needs to be a filter for this sort of stuff... like "-5 frivolous." "Frivolous" would filter out things like lifesize models of Luke Skywalker made of mashed potatoes and Testor's enamel. This stuff hurts me.

Both of my thumbs are double jointed. Because of this, I have always crushed every single thumb wrestling opponent. No one has ever been able to pin my thumb, because I can quickly snap it out of harm's way via the double-jointed action. Then, as soon as I detect a hint of fatigue in my opponent's thumb, my thumb pounces like a mongoose.